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Aotearoa
Aotearoa (), originally used in reference to the North Island of New Zealand, is now the most widely known and accepted Māori name for the entire country. It is often pronounced by English speakers, and is becoming widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. Since the 1990s it has been the custom to sing New Zealand's national anthem, "God Defend New Zealand", in both Māori and English, exposing the term ''Aotearoa'' to a wider audience.
==Translation==
The original derivation of ''Aotearoa'' is not known. The word can be broken up as: ''ao'' = cloud, dawn, daytime or world, ''tea'' = white, clear or bright and ''roa'' = long. It can also be broken up as ''Aotea'' = the name of one of the migratory waka that travelled to New Zealand, or the Large Magellanic Cloud, and ''roa'' = long. The common translation is "the land of the long white cloud". Alternative translations are ‘long bright world’ or ‘land of abiding day’ referring to the length and quality of the New Zealand daylight (when compared to the shorter days found further north in Polynesia).
In some traditional stories, Aotearoa was the name of the canoe of the explorer Kupe, and he named the land after it. Kupe's wife (in some versions, his daughter) was watching the horizon and called "He ao! He ao!" ("a cloud! a cloud!"). Other versions say the canoe was guided by a long white cloud in the course of the day and by a long bright cloud at night. On arrival, the sign of land to Kupe’s crew was the long cloud hanging over it. The cloud caught Kupe’s attention and he said “Surely is a point of land”. Because of the cloud which greeted them, Kupe named the land Aotearoa. Aotearoa can also be broken up as: ''aotea-roa''. ''Aotea'' is the name of one of the Māori migration canoes. The first land sighted was accordingly named ''Aotea'' (Cloud), now Great Barrier Island. When a much larger landmass was found beyond Aotea, it was called ''Aotea-roa'' (Long Aotea).〔There are several other explanations of the origin of the word Aotearoa, of varying plausibility. Those that apply more to the South Island, relating to high snowy mountain ranges, or to the long Southern twilight, must be regarded with suspicion, given that Māori only used Aotearoa to refer to the North Island. One explanation derives the name from seafaring. The first sign of land from a boat is often cloud in the sky above the island. The North Island's mountain ranges sometimes generate standing waves of long lenticular clouds. Another explanation relates to the mountains of the North Island Volcanic Plateau. In some years, the mountains are snow-capped for limited periods. The supposition here is that Polynesian travellers, unused to snow, might well have seen these snowy peaks as a long white cloud. A third hypothesis surmises that Polynesian seafarers came from the tropics where night comes rapidly, with little twilight. New Zealand, in temperate latitudes, would have provided long periods of evening twilight, and also long summer days. Thus ''Aotearoa'', would then translate as "long light sky".〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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